


The Fall of Oikawa Tooru

by KaiserWashington



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Awkward Kageyama Tobio, Catharsis, Crying Oikawa Tooru, Depressed Oikawa Tooru, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Insecure Oikawa Tooru, Post-Canon, Protective Kageyama Tobio, Sad Oikawa Tooru
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-03-06 05:48:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18844882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaiserWashington/pseuds/KaiserWashington
Summary: Oikawa never recovered from Aobajosai's loss to Karasuno in the spring tournament prelims. Now Kageyama, in his second year of high school, remembers his old senpai and pays him a visit in college, where he gets sucked into Oikawa's issues.





	The Fall of Oikawa Tooru

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: This is maudlin bilge. I originally wanted it to be fluff, but I also wanted to give Oikawa's insecurities some serious airing.

**The Fall of Oikawa Tooru**

Oikawa Toru had stopped playing volleyball.

That’s what Kageyama thought when he came to visit his old senpai at his university in Tokyo. Oikawa answered the door with the characteristic pout that adorned his face whenever his gaze fell on Kageyama’s odious person, but his eyes no longer shone with their old fire. They were dark and tired behind his half-rim glasses. Something was off.

Iwaizumi had warned Kageyama about this.

“Oikawa’s… different,” he had said.

“How so?”

“You’ll see.”

“Tobio,” said Oikawa simply. “What are you doing here?”

Kageyama wondered if Iwaizumi had told Oikawa that he’d be visiting. His self-possession crumbled as he realized that he would have to tell Oikawa himself.

“Oikawa-san,” he began nervously. “I hadn’t seen you in a while, and Iwaizumi-san said it would be all right if I came and saw you, but if now is not a good time, then I’ll just—”

“Come in.” Oikawa sighed and stepped aside to let Kageyama in.

Iwaizumi was in the kitchen, grabbing an energy drink from the fridge. Of the two he was the only one in gym clothes. Obviously he still played volleyball.

Kageyama cast him a look of betrayal.

Iwaizumi shrugged.

Oikawa sat down at the kitchen table, and Kageyama sat down across from him, setting his shoulder bag down in his lap. He had a vision of the time he had been called to the principal’s office to be reprimanded about his grades. The only difference was he hadn’t been quite so on edge back then.

“Don’t you play for the college team?” he asked at length, breaking the silence.

Iwaizumi answered for Oikawa with another shrug as he headed out of the apartment, laden with gym bag, energy drink, and a banana.

“You can take a horse to water, but I haven’t been able to make that one drink ever since the spring tournament prelims.” He pointed to Oikawa with the banana. “It’s too bad. I keep telling him he could be the best college-level volleyball player in Tokyo.” He sighed. “Later. Don’t wreck the apartment.”

“Don’t leave me alone with Tobio!” Oikawa pleaded. “I only agreed to do this because you said you’d be here.”

“Don’t be Shittykawa today,” said Iwaizumi. “This will be good for you.”

Iwaizumi let the door shut behind him, leaving a tense silence in his wake.

“So, uhm, Oikawa-san,” Kageyama began awkwardly, casting his eyes around the place, searching for inspiration for his next words. There was an interesting blown-glass flower vase on the coffee table, but that didn’t offer any. On the wall hung a miniature replica of the bronze face from Sendai City Gymnasium that would have made for an amusing topic of conversation, if he had been other than Kageyama and visiting someone other than Oikawa. “What happened? I thought you’d continue playing volleyball after high school.”

“I thought so, too,” said Oikawa dreamily. “Stuff happens. I thought it was a good time to call it quits and let go before I turned into a sad old man cleaving to some delusional idea that he had yet to reach his true potential.”

“What are you talking about?” said Kageyama. “You were always great. You and I were at one win, one loss each, remember? What happened to that?”

Oikawa scoffed.

“Hajime put you up to this, didn’t he?”

“Put me up to what?”

“Is this supposed to be therapy?”

Oikawa stretched out in the kitchen chair, though it was obvious he was only affecting insouciance. No one could look that relaxed in a straight-backed wooden chair.

“It might make you happy to hear that my life’s pretty shit right now,” he went on, addressing the bronze face instead of Kageyama. “Iwa-chan thinks the solution to that is resolving unfinished business with you, but he never understood that you are the reason everything is finished.”

Kageyama sat up straight and braced himself for the torrent of invective that he was sure would follow. Oikawa-san is going through some stuff right now, he reminded himself.

“You know, when I was in middle school someone rescued me from the brink of despair by convincing me that just because I wasn’t a genius it didn’t necessarily mean I’d realized my full extent of my talents.” Oikawa spoke in an unsettlingly detached fashion, as if he were talking about somebody other than himself. “I was a kid, so I believed him, and I believed it meant I stood a chance against the likes of you.” He turned and smiled benignly at Kageyama. “Basically he told me I was a loser but that I had the potential to be a slightly better loser. Back then I took whatever I could get. That’s what allowed me to stick it out all the way through high school. But now, seeing how much you’ve grown after just a year in high school, it seems silly to think I belong in this world—the world of volleyball, that is. I sometimes wish I’d picked fucking baseball instead. I could pitch a mean curveball as a kid. I might have had a glorious career ahead of me, free from annoying prodigies like you, who were born on third base.”

Kageyama knew that Oikawa didn’t take loss well. It had surprised him not a little to see him dealing with Seijoh’s loss in the spring prelims in a mature and adultlike fashion. That loss had ended his high school volleyball career. It was a tough pill for anyone to swallow, but especially so for one as proud as Oikawa. Apparently his composure had only been a front. Bottling up all those emotions was doubtless what drove him to this extremity.

“What are you up to these days?” he asked by way of keeping the conversation going. He surprised himself with the way he was handling the situation. Perhaps the rumors about his social awkwardness were just rumors.

“Uhm,” Oikawa responded, screwing up his face and making an exaggerated show of thinking. He always became childish when he was dissembling his true emotions. That much was clear to anyone who had known him for a length of time. “Lots of things? Like…”

Oikawa reviewed with disgust the dissipation he had given himself over to in the months since starting college. He had binged through seven seasons of _The X-Files_. By the eighth season, the show was well past its prime—much like him. He had signed up for a ballroom dancing class but quit after the third week, because the girls he was paired with reminded him all too vividly of his girlfriend in high school, who had dumped him because his heart had belonged to volleyball. Karaoke nights? Good for a couple hours of oblivion but not enough to fill the volleyball-shaped hole in his heart. Drinking till he passed out? Unfortunately, he was still a year away from being able to do that. There was a definite theme here.

“Nothing, okay?” He dropped the façade and snarled at Kageyama. “I don’t know why you’d care what I do anymore, unless it’s to rub your superiority in my face.”

He’s worse than I expected, Kageyama thought.

“It’s not fair.” Tears of frustration shone in Oikawa’s eyes but didn’t fall. “I worked so hard at everything. And then you showed up, and it was like a slap to the face. It felt like you were mocking me. I hated you, because I knew I could never reach your level. And then you went and improved in leaps and bounds anyway, and by the time I saw you again in high school, I hated you even more.” Oikawa paused to clear his throat and conceal the quiver in his voice. “I know you’re here for volleyball advice, because that’s all you ever think about,” he went on in his sulky singsong way. “So I’ll be a good senpai and help you. It’s not like I have any self-respect left. Spit it out. Why are you here?”

It was true. Kageyama had originally come to see Oikawa for volleyball advice. At the end of his first year he had been able to elicit 100% or even 120% from all his teammates and thought he had finally matched Oikawa as a setter. But then his second year rolled around, and a band of troublesome new recruits joined the volleyball club, and it was like he was back to where he had started, despite the intensive youth training camp and experience he had gained at the nationals. Purely in terms of technique he might be judged to be a better setter than Oikawa, but volleyball was a game played with six players on each side. That was an eternal cliché, but that didn’t make it the less true. It didn’t matter how good any one player was. Now, however, seeing Oikawa like this, it seemed unseemly to talk about his own problems.

“I’m here to listen to you,” Kageyama replied softly. He winced at the note of condescension in his voice and hoped Oikawa didn’t pick up on it. He didn’t need to worry, because the flood gates had been opened, and Oikawa was inexorable.

“My life is terrible,” Oikawa went on with a gleefully self-pitying smile that creeped Kageyama out.

This must be what rock bottom looks like, he thought.

“Iwa-chan and the others have it all figured out. I don’t even know what I’m doing in college. My grades are falling, my social life is nonexistent, and I don’t even have volleyball anymore to take my mind off everything else. I feel like I peaked in high school, and it’s all downhill from here. Go ahead, laugh. Oikawa-san has fallen. I’ll even allow you the satisfaction of claiming to be the one who felled him.”

“I’m not laughing.” Kageyama was hurt that Oikawa would think he would make light of his problems. “I just want to help you.”

Oikawa regarded Kageyama for a minute. If he was being honest with himself, all he wanted to do was to lock himself in his room and cry. He seemed to be doing that an awful lot lately, whenever Iwaizumi left and he was alone in the apartment. He did it so often that at times like this, when the urge came over him, he couldn’t summon the will to go through it again. Instead he put on a pleasant exterior and went about his day, numb on the inside from shoving his feelings somewhere they wouldn’t bother him. Now, seeing Kageyama before him with a look of concern and confusion on his face broke his resolve and caused those repressed feelings to burst forth like a reservoir that has broken its banks.

Oikawa removed his glasses and set them down on the table. The tears he had tried to hold back rolled freely down his face, spotting the tablecloth. He buried his face in his hands and cried, doubling over, as if in agony.

Kageyama rose and went around to Oikawa’s side of the table.

“If you tell Iwa-chan you saw me like this, I will kill you,” Oikawa sobbed.

“I won’t.”

Kageyama reached out and touched Oikawa’s shoulder.

“No, Tobio-chan,” Oikawa moaned, pushing Kageyama away with an effete shove. “Look away. You can’t see Oikawa-san like this.”

Kageyama stood his ground and wrapped a shaky arm around Oikawa. He wasn’t in the habit of doing things like this, but he supposed that that’s what people did when comfort was in order.

“Oikawa-san,” he said softly near his ear in a manner that he hoped would give comfort. “Please don’t cry, Oikawa-san.”

This time Oikawa did not recoil. His pride had broken. Kageyama, in trying to comfort him, probably thought he was just doing a nice thing for his senpai. He didn’t realize that to Oikawa it looked as if he was bending from his divine height to lift his archenemy out of the mud. It was just as well. Perhaps Oikawa’s place was in the mud. He didn’t have any right to inflict his stupid pride on someone as far above him as Kageyama.

“I’m so jealous,” Oikawa said through clenched teeth, voice choking, eyes squeezed shut against Kageyama’s sincere but awkward attempts to comfort him. “I’m so unbelievably jealous of you. Maybe you haven’t been able to see that, because you’ve always been such a _baka_. It crushes me to think that even at my best I’m no match for you. I could practice twenty hours a day till my joints and muscles fell apart, and it still wouldn’t make a difference. It makes me want to throw up. And on top of it all, you had the nerve to ask me to show you how to do a jump serve. Figure it out your own genius fucking self. It wouldn’t take you more than a few tries to master something I spent over a year perfecting. What even is the point of pretending someone like you could learn something from someone like me? Do you enjoy reminding everyone that you’re a genius and we’re just pitiful losers?”

Kageyama was taken back to the time in junior high when he had approached Oikawa, naïvely hoping the latter would show him his serving technique. He still recalled that strange episode from time to time. It had taken him a long time to recover from it and to regain his trust in his senpais. But he never imagined that Oikawa would remember it after all these years. Evidently it had affected him, as well.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Oikawa went on. “‘To a miserable non-genius like Oikawa-san, life is a zero-sum game. The reason why he didn’t teach me how to serve in junior high was that Tobio-chan’s gain would have been Oikawa-san’s loss.’”

Kageyama hadn’t been thinking that, even if he could have strung together and imputed a motive that complex to someone.

“I only ever admired you in junior high,” he said.

“That’s because you didn’t know then what an ordinary loser I was,” Oikawa wailed.

Kageyama was not sure to what extent Oikawa’s emotions were genuine and to what extent they were his typical over-the-top histrionics. He peered down at Oikawa’s tear-streaked face. His eyes were squeezed shut, his cheeks glistened with moisture, and he cried with the abandon of a child, clutching his tee shirt over his chest, as if his heart were physically hurting him.

“People told me I was good.” Oikawa’s voice and body shook piteously under Kageyama’s arm. “That I was still a better setter than you—‘for now.’ Now that you’ve clearly surpassed me, they couldn’t give two shits about me. People who tried to make me believe in my skills in junior high and high school only did that because my meager skills were enough to win their stupid games and win trophies for our school. Now I’m no longer useful, so they tossed me out like trash.”

“Senpai, you graduated.”

Kageyama knew that Oikawa was talking nonsense now, but he thought it best to let his emotions run their course, like a fever or a bout of stomach flu, and so listened quietly as he compared himself to lower and lower lifeforms.

“I am just a common earthworm,” Oikawa lamented, “writhing along the ground, waiting to be squished under a boot.”

“I’m sure you’re not, Oikawa-san.”

“I’m a dung beetle, rolling around in shit.”

“Dung beetles are cute.”

“I was once young and cute,” Oikawa wailed, fresh tears spilling down his face.

Kageyama patted his back.

“I’m sorry, Tobio-chan, I’m so sorry.” Oikawa buried his face in Kageyama’s _gakuran_ jacket, which he had just washed yesterday. “I didn’t mean to hit you. I wasn’t thinking straight. I just wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s all right, Oikawa-san, you didn’t hit me,” said Kageyama soothingly. “And I forgive you.”

“No, you can’t forgive me,” Oikawa sobbed. “I’ve been a bad senpai. Oikawa-san doesn’t deserve the respect of his kouhais. He’s a loser, and he is trash.”

He wondered whether Oikawa had hydrated before this outburst; otherwise his body might run out of water soon. Kageyama would have to intervene soon before Oikawa got a headache from dehydration. That would suck.

Fortunately, inspiration was just in the offing.

“We lost,” said Kageyama.

“Huh?”

The words found their mark. The tears did not stop, but there was a spark of life in Oikawa’s eyes when he looked up in confusion, cheeks swollen, snot clinging obscenely to his nose. It was like seeing the sun peer out from behind the clouds after a thunderstorm. Kageyama felt as if he were the senpai and Oikawa were his kouhai.

“We lost in the inter-high prelims again this year. Second round.”

The smile that lit up Oikawa’s face was so genuine and radiant that Kageyama almost found himself smiling back before he remembered that that wasn’t supposed to be a happy memory for Karasuno.

“Yay!” said Oikawa, springing back to his usual frivolous self for a moment. “It makes me so happy when you lose!”

Is this guy for real? Kageyama thought.

For a while there was silence again. Kageyama had forgotten that he still had his arm around Oikawa, and Oikawa, too, had gone so far as to throw his arms around his kouhai, as he had been wont to do to his teammates in happier days and more flippant moods.

“It’s better this way, don’t you think?” Oikawa said at length. His voice was hoarse from crying.

“What do you mean?”

“We could have been friends, if I’d never played volleyball. You’re the only one who has any right to play volleyball—you who have the talent. I was just fooling around.”

“‘Any right’?” said Kageyama. “Do you think talent alone gives you the right to play?”

“Well, it’s certainly useful.”

Kageyama’s body shook as he tried to deploy his limited communication skills to make a case for passion and hard work being more important than talent.

“Look at Hinata,” he said as a last resort. “That guy has no talent, but he forced the best volleyball players in the country to acknowledge him.”

“I know.” Oikawa giggled. His phone buzzed on the table. “Speak of the devil.”

“Is that… Hinata?” Kageyama asked in disbelief. “And why is that your wallpaper?”

Oikawa showed Kageyama the picture his nephew took last year of Kageyama bowing before Oikawa while Oikawa flashed the camera a victory sign and a toothy grin.

“It makes me happy,” he said. He glanced briefly at Hinata’s message before putting his phone down. “You weren’t the first person to approach me for volleyball advice after I graduated, not counting my former teammates.”

“Hinata approached you?”

Oikawa nodded and grinned.

“‘O _Daiou_ -sama,’ he said, or words to that effect. ‘Help me defeat that _baka_ Kageyama.’ I was tempted to take him up on it so I could see someone with even less talent than me shove your smug face into the dirt.”

“Oikawa-san,” said Kageyama. “How can you talk like that when you’re still hugging me?”

“Stop complaining,” said Oikawa. “I just need you to keep saying nice things about me right now.”

Anyone else might have brushed off Oikawa’s blatant attempt to fish for compliments, but Kageyama spent a minute in thought.

“Your ability to fit in with any team you play with is truly godlike. You don’t just bring 100% out of your teammates, whether they like it not: You elevate them to your level. That’s not something I could ever learn. If you were worried you weren’t a genius, don’t be.”

“H’m!” Oikawa brightened. “I guess you’re right! Tell me more.”

“U-uh…”

Oikawa sniffled.

“That’s not all there was, was it?”

“O-of course not!” Kageyama stammered. “You’re naturally athletic. You’re a lot smarter than me. I’d go so far as to say the difference is one of Heaven and Earth. I could never match you in these respects.”

“You’re right!”

Oikawa laughed. He couldn’t remember when he had laughed so freely.

“That means you could pull your grades up easily if you wanted to. I could spend two weeks studying for an exam, and I’d barely score 30%.”

“I must be a genius.”

“As for your social life, you have Iwaizumi-san and Hanamaki-san here with you.”

“They probably don’t care about me anymore, since I stopped playing volleyball.”

“ _Baka_ ,” said Kageyama sharply.

Oikawa was taken aback.

“I’ll bet it’s all they think about when they go down to the gym every day. ‘Why isn’t Oikawa-san here with us?’ You should give your friends more credit. Iwaizumi-san was really worried, you know?”

“I made Iwa-chan worry about me?”

“He has more forehead wrinkles than I remember.”

Oikawa giggled at the thought.

“Iwa-chan has probably turned thirty already.”

“Why don’t you come to one of our practice sessions?” said Kageyama. “It might make you feel better to see that we still live in fear of Oikawa-san.”

“What’s the catch?”

“You’ll have to teach everyone your jump serve.”

“I might consider it once I’ve seen you fall flat on your face a few times.”

Kageyama scowled. Even in this state Oikawa was bent on being difficult.

“And finally, promise me one thing,” he said, clearing his throat.

“That I’ll say sowwy to Iwa-chan and join the volleyball team?”

Kageyama’s face turned red as Oikawa stole from him what he thought would make a cool conclusion to his pep talk and made it sound cheesy as hell.

“Wait for me,” he said instead. “In two years, I’m going to be in college.”

“You’ll have to study hard, Tobio-chan!”

Kageyama colored.

“I have to catch the train soon.” He rose and gathered his shoulder bag. “But I can make you a cup of tea before I go. That look on your face really doesn’t suit you.”

“Iwa-chan has a jar of black tea from England that I’m not allowed to touch,” said Oikawa mischievously. “Knock yourself out. I like mine extra strong.”

end.

**Author's Note:**

> I might write a sequel to this at some point. I felt like Oikawa and Kageyama needed some kind of closure. Hopefully Oikawa will return in a prominent role in the future, and they will get that in the series.


End file.
